ARCHIPENKO 


a i * ee : 


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Tour of the Exhibition of the Works 
of 


ALEXANDER 
ARCHIPENKO 


INTRODUCTION BY 


C. J. BULLIET 
Gao le Ce cA Gan © 


New York, MCMXXVII 


ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO EXHIBITIONS 


Archipenko participated in hundreds of collective exhibi- 


tions in different cities of Europe and America. 


A great: 


many of his works are found in museums and private col- 


lections in many countries. 


The large individual and retrospective exhibitions of 
Archipenko have been shown as follows: 


Hagen Museum, Westphalia 1910 


Berlin 1913 
Geneva 1919 
Zurich Museum 1919 
London I919 
Venice 1920 
Geneva 1921 
New York 1921 
Berlin . 1921 
Wiesbaden Museum 1g21 
Hannover 1921 


Tour of the Exhibition in the West of the 


Leipzig Museum 
Dresden 


Berlin, National Gallery 


Frankfort 
Mannheim Museum 
Prague Museum 
New York 

New York 

Chicago 

New Orleans 
Kansas City 
Philadelphia 


United States 


Denver Museum 

Los Angeles Museum 
San Diego 

Oakland 

Portland Museum 


1927 
1927 
1927 
1927 
1927 


1922 
1922 
1922 
1923 
1923 
1902525 
1924 
1925 
1925 
1926 
1926 
1926 


After the tour of the exhibition in the West of the United 
States, Archipenko’s works will be shown in New York, and 
in 1928 they will be exhibited in the following cities of 


Europe. 
Amsterdam Antwerp 
Rotterdam Berlin 
La Haye Dresden 
Brussels Munich 


Frankfort 
Mannheim 
Zurich 


Paris, etc. 


Onward. Bronze, 1 925. 


CONTRODUCTION 


Archipenko 
Tp) 


ODIN introduced into sculpture a surface tingle of flesh that 
marble through the ages had not known—a heresy. Archi- 
penko has gone further. He has made his forms live, with an 
internal fire. Scan a show of his quickly, or turn rapidly through 
monographs illustrating his work. ‘The striking impression is 
vitality. Everything is alive—eager, dynamic, flaming upward. 
That is the essence of his work, its flavor, the distinctive quality 
that counts. | 


Archipenko, even now only 39, has been in the eye of the 
art world for 17 years. He has been the subject of much critical 
discussion—most of which turns out ultimately to be wrong or 
partially wrong. Criticism seeks to classify—to pigeon-hole. 
Archipenko, a volcano of creative genius, inevitably bursts the walls 
of his classification—splinters to fragments his niche so nicely pre- 
pared for him in the archives of the savants. 


“Cubist” he has been called, and is so designated in the already 
formal histories of the modern art movements. ‘‘Cubist” however, 
he is not—any more than Picasso, inventor of “Cubism.” He has 
experimented in the geometrical technique of the most vital art 
movement of modern times, and has produced ‘“Cubistic” sculp- 
ture without rival. 


But Archipenko has passed through the “‘Cubistic’’ experiment, 
emerging with a power of expression he could have acquired in 
no other way. 


“The purely abstract,” he explained to me, “is a delight to the 
artist and to the few who can appreciate what the artist is striving 
for. 


During the past summer, at Woodstock, however, he applied to 
painting the same strength that he concentrates on his sculpture. 
Archipenko’s painted nudes throb—every nerve quivers—feverishly 
they flame upward, like the saints of El Greco. Archipenko may 
be attaining here the ultimate expression which modern painting, 
floundering bravely and amazingly about, has been striving for. 


It is in sculptural forms that Archipenko thinks. The intense 
fire of his marbles and bronzes, increasing rather than diminish- 
ing in intensity as he proceeds, is all the more remarkable as the 
expression of an emotional nature guided and directed by one of the 
keenest, most analytical minds of the modern art world. 


Archipenko is the son of an inventor who was mechanical engi- 
neer at Kiev University, in Ukrania, and has inherited much of 
his father’s talent for mathematics and his skill in the construction 
of mechanical devices. His father mapped out for him the career 
of an engineer, but by the time he was 16, Archipenko had grasped 
the relationship between mathematics and art, as exemplified in the 
genius of Leonardo de Vinci. 


Mathematics, purest and most abstract of the sciences, is nearly 
universally considered in our day enimical to emotional expres- 
sion—to painting, sculpture, music, and poetry. ‘The philosophers 
of old time knew better. Their highest poetic conception, ‘‘the 
music of the spheres,” was the white hot focus of the intellectually 
abstract and the emotionally sensuous. In our day, nobody has 
experienced the quintessence of poetry who has not learned to 
follow a comet hurtling through the universe on a parabolic curve. 
Einstein, whether or not he knows what an iambic pentameter can 
do alongside a hexameter in a Spencerian stanza, deserves rank 
alongside the great creative poets of all time. 


Enthusiastic admirers of Archipenko would place him among 
the mythical dozen who grasp the Einstein theory—perhaps at the 
head of the list, since Archipenko is credited by them with apply- 
ing the Einstein theory to statuary—a tremendous feat, seeing how 
vague and tenuously abstract is the theory. 


Archipenko, replying to this suggestion, when brought to his 
attention, observed: 


“I know that my knowledge of science does not suffice to under- 
stand the Einstein theory in all its aspects, but its spiritual sub- 
stance is clear to me. I am convinced that life refracted in the 
prisms of art opens vistas to us into otherwise inaccessible depths, 
and when I realized the wisdom of the Creator in the words of 
Einstein, it seemed to me that I knew all that—perhaps I had seen 
it in my dreams. 


“I have a suspicion that the theory of relativity was always hidden 
in art, but Einstein with his genius has made it concrete with words 
and units. I am convinced that, thanks to Einstein, one can speak 
of art as something concrete; I do not speak of works of art, but 


of the mysterious process of creation. I never have spoken to 
anyone of this clear awakening of reason and comprehension which 
the Einstein theory brought forth in me. My invention, ‘Peinture 
Changeante,’ I owe to the theory of relativity. In spite of my silence 
on the subject of relativity, there are critics who sense in my crea- 
tions and the Einstein theory a mysterious and inexplicable analogy.” 


The ‘Peinture Changeante,’ of which Archipenko speaks, is 
a most fascinating machine of his invention, in his studio on West 
Fifty-seventh Street, New York. The observer is shown a screen 
on which is painted a study in pure abstract form. Archipenko 
then presses an electric button, and the abstract form begins 
gradually to change, assuming concrete shape. Then, the trans- 
formation proceeds through most of the phases of the female body 
Archipenko has painted and chiseled. 


If Archipenko derives from Einstein—or from the common 
fund of philosophy from which Einstein also sprang—he has had 
inspiration, also, from the empyrean to which Bach harkened when 
he evolved his mysterious chords. It was an Italian critic who first 
sensed the Bach analogy. The mystery of this sculptor goes far 
deeper than marble and chisel. 


Archipenko, profound emotionally and intellectually, is the 
fortunate possessor, too, of a skill that enables him to carry out his 
inspirations deftly and surely in marble or bronze or wood, or on 
canvas, 


‘Though much of his work is beyond the grasp of laymen—even 
of artists and connoisseurs—so expert is his technique that he has 
forced into popular appreciation a series of tapering nude female 
figures, elongated beyond nature, but so exquisitely rounded and 
so marvelously beautiful as pure form, that even the most ignor- 
ant in Art are hypnotized into forgetting comparison with bodies 


of flesh and blood. 


He has done here, in a great way, with form, what Aubrey 
Beardsley did, in a lesser way, with line. Few lovers of art fail 
to grasp now what Beardsley was driving at. The far greater 
master of line, Matisse, is still a puzzle to the generality. Archi- 
penko is as profound in sculpture as Matisse is in drawing. 


Alexander Achipenko is a Ukranian, born at Kiev in 1887. 
“T come of a people who has no art tradition,” he says of himself. 
“My ancestors, the same as the Russians, availed themselves in 
the past of Byzantian and Oriental influences. I like Byzantine 
and Oriental art, in fact all that is of genius in every country and 


of all times, and my real tradition is found everywhere—in the 
genius of human creation. There is no nationality in my crea- 
tions. In that respect, I am no more Ukranian than I am Chinese. 
I am no one person.” 


In 1909, after he had been in Paris for about two years, 
Archipenko began to develop with assurance the individuality that 
was to bring him into sharp attention and to start the turmoil that 
has not ceased and will not cease as long as his creative, inventive 
powers remain feverishly active. He began to display with the 
Independents and in the Salon d’Automne. His work was singled 
out for caustic comment and stormy controversy. 


Archipenko remained in France—in Paris and Nice—until 19109. 
Then, he made an extensive tour of the different European coun- 
tries, with his exhibition. In 1923, he came to New York, where 
he opened a school, on the same order of the ones he had in Paris 
and Berlin. His intention is to make America his home. 


Archipenko displayed constantly in the Independent shows of 
Paris. But starting in 1912, he exhibited in a big way all over 
Europe. In 1920 he participated, with much applause, in the In- 
ternational Exposition in Venice. He enjoyed separate exhibitions 
in almost all the capitals of Europe, and his work has been pur- 
chased by twenty-eight continental museums. 

Since coming to America, he has displayed his work in various 
cities. 

Archipenko in each successive work gives evidence of growth— 
of a vitality vividly alive. 

The fire of Archipenko’s genius that flames upward in_ his 
female nudes is burning at a white heat. 


C. JiBupires 
(Chicago) 


W. Mengelberg in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Bronze, 1926. 


One exemplary in the collection M. Amsterdam. 


Group of Two Women. Terra Cotta, 1926. 


feed. Terra Cotta, 1926. 


Flat Torso. Gilted Bronze, 1915. 


One exemplary in the collection I. New York. 


Spring Torso. Gilted Bronze, 1925. 


One exemplary in the collection H. New York 


Young Girl. Bronze, 1926. 


White Morning 
Suzanne © 
Cleopatra 
Abundance 
Melancholy 
Torso 

Caryatid 
Toward Another 
The Dreamer 
ine slearl 

Two Women 
still Life 

In the Garden 


14 


15 


Mengelberg in the IXth Symphony of Beethoven 
, Bronze, 1926 


One exemplary in the collection M. Amsterdam. 


Young Girl Bronze, 1926 
Salome ~ Terra Cotta 
Diana Bronze 


One exemplary in the collection G. New York. 


The Past—Silver Mask 1926 
Group of Two Women Terra Cotta 
Repose Marble, 1909 


One exemplary in Stadtisches Museum, Essen, Germany. 


The Graceful Movement (concave) 
Silvered Bronze, 1923 


One exemplary in the collection D. New York. 


Sketch of Movement Terra Cotta 
The End Terra Cotta 
Fragment Bronze, 1909 


One exemplary in the collection F. Geneva. 


Leaning Terra Cotte 


Angelica—Head (Variation 6.) Bronze, 1925 


enh 


28 


a? 


30 


il 


Jd 


33 


34 


35 


36 


37 


38 


Tangara Motive (concave) Bronze, 1914 


Statuette (concave ) Bronze, 1914 
One exemplary in the collection I. Tokyo. 


Woman Dressing Her Hair (concave) Bronze, 1914 


One exemplary in the collection I. Tokyo. 


Sitting Torso Bronze, 1909 


One exemplary in the collection N, Tokyo. 


Glorification of Beauty (concave) 
Silvered Bronze, 1926 


One exemplary in the collection D. New York. 


The Last Moment of the City of Pompeii 
Bronze,1925 


Feminine Solitude Marble, 1921 


One exemplary in the Museum of Mannheim, Germany. 
Another exemplary in the Museum of Frankfort, Germany. 


Spring Torso Gilted Bronze, 1925 
One exemplary in the collection H. New York. 

Woman Turning Bronzen i925 
One exemplary in the collection R. Bremen. 

Two Souls Bronze 
Onward Bronze 1925 
Torso Bronze, 1916 


One exemplary in National Gallerie, Berlin. 
Another exemplary in the Art Club, Chicago. 


Ne: 


40 


4] 


42 


43 


44 


45 


46 


47 


48 


49 


50 


51 


Head Marble, 1920 
One exemplary in the collection G. New York. 

Portrait of “Miss E” Gilted Bronze, 1926 
Flat Torso Gilted Bronze, 1914 


One exemplary in the collection I. New York. 


Woman Standing Bronze 
One exemplary in the Museum of Rotterdam, Holland. 


Kneeling Gilted Bronze, 1925 
One exemplary in the collection W. New Orleans. 

Rape : Bronze 
Uhegcarl Marble 
Black Torso Bronze, 1909 
One exemplary in the Museum of Mannheim, Germany. 

Man Bronze, 1922 
One exemplary in the collection S$. Berlin. 

Woman Sitting Bronze, 1923 
One exemplary in the collection W. Frankfort. 

Promenade Bronze, 1925 
Two Women Bronze, 1925 
Woman Bending Bronze, 1921 


One exemplary in the Vienna Museum, and one exemplary in the 
Museum of Ossaka, Japan. 


bk 


Kneeling. 


One exemplary in the collection W. New Orleans. 


1926 


Silver, 


The Past. 


Angelica. (Variation 6.) Bronze, 1925. 


Feminine Solitude. 


One exemplary in the Staedtische Kunshalle, Mannheim 
Another exemplary in the Staedel Museum, Frankfurt 


Woman Standing. Bronze, 1921. 


One exemplary in the Booymans Museum, Rotterdam. 


Glorification of Beauty. Silvered Bronze, 1925. 


One exemplary in the collection D. New York. 


White Torso. Marble, 1916. 


One exemplary in the National Galerie, Berlin. 
Another exemplary in the Art Club, Chicago. 


Statuette.  Silvered Bronze, 1923. 


One exemplary in the collection D. New York. 


Woman. Decorative Panel in three different metals. 


Société Anonyme, New York 


Cleopatra. 


peer O20 


Melancholy 


The Rape. Bronze. 


LITERATURE ON THE WORKS OF 
ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO 


ARCHIPENKO MonocrapH—in French, German, Ukran- 
an, and English by Professor Dr. Hans Hilde- 
brandt—Berlin, 1923. 


ARCHIPENKO Monocrapuy—in German—by Dr. Erich 
Werese, 1923; 


ARCHIPENKO MonocrapH—in Spanish— Editora Inter- 
nacional—Buenos Aires. 


ARCHIPENKO .MonocrapH—by Roland Schacht—Sturm 


Edition, Berlin. 


ARCHIPENKO MonocrapH—in French—Broglio Edition 
Rome, 1922. 


ARCHIPENKO MonocrapH—by Nicholas Golubetz, Lwow, 
2927, 


ARCHIPENKO ALBpuM—by Theodor Daubler, Iwan Goll, 
Blaise Cendrars—Edition G. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam, 
1921. 


ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO—Sturm Bilderbuecher — Berlin, 
Bees: 


Numerous books on the History of Art and Encyclopedias. 


Designed and Printed by 
GraPuHic Press, INc. 
New York 


